Playing With Fire

“Not yet. But we’re still sifting through the debris. Is it possible that the boy drugged McMahon, if that is indeed what happened, but someone else set the fire?”

“Possible,” said Banks, “but highly unlikely, wouldn’t you say? Don’t forget, someone drugged Gardiner, too.”

“Could that also have been the boy?”

“He was in the vicinity of Je

“You let him go missing?”

“We had no reason to keep him locked up. He had an altercation with a friend and hoofed it. We’ll find him. Okay?”

Hamilton put up his hands in mock surrender. “All right. All right.”

Banks smiled. “So what’s left as far as motive is concerned?”

“Well, there are fires started to conceal a crime.”

“Which is also a distinct possibility here,” Banks said. “Fire destroys evidence. Maybe not as much as the criminal thinks, but often it’s enough.”

“Evidence of what, though?” Hamilton asked.

“That’s what we don’t know yet. It looks as if Thomas McMahon might have been involved in art forgery, and Gardiner was fired for fiddling the company he worked for, but that’s all we’ve got so far. We’re still digging. First we need to know if there was any co

“Sounds fair enough. I’m just hoping to hell there aren’t any more fires.”

“Me, too,” said Banks.

“There is one ray of hope,” said Hamilton.

“What’s that?”

“The use of petrol as an accelerant might be a godsend.”

“How come?”

“Well, you know that different brands of petrol contain different additives, so you can tell, say, Esso from Texaco from Shell through spectral analysis?”

“I’ve heard about that,” said Banks. “But it won’t do us a lot of good in this case. Millions of people use Esso, Shell or Texaco.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t stop there,” Hamilton went on. “When the petrol is pumped into a station’s underground tank, then more contaminants are added unique to that tank.”

“Are you telling me we can discover what garage the petrol came from through spectral analysis of the debris at the scene?”

“Not only that,” said Hamilton, “but when you put the petrol in your fuel tank, another unique blend is created. By checking all local petrol stations and sampling each tank, we can actually determine which station the petrol came from and link it to the scene, or to a specific car’s fuel tank.”

“You’re not serious?”

“I always take my work seriously, double-oh-seven.”

Hamilton didn’t crack a smile, so it took Banks a moment to catch on. A Bond reference. Geoff Hamilton clearly had hidden depths.

“But in order to find a possible match,” Banks said, “we’d have to sample every underground tank in every petrol station in the area?”

“That’s right. It helps if you have other information that helps you narrow down the search field.”

“Not yet, we don’t, but it’s something to think about,” Banks said. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” said Hamilton. He glanced at his watch. “And believe it or not, I’m going home now. My wife’s begi

“I remember the feeling,” said Banks, who pla

Later, just after nine, there was a modern version of Great Expectations on BBC, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Banks liked the original Dickens novel, and he liked Gwyneth Paltrow, the way she sort of lit up the screen when she walked on.

Besides, he found watching television – anything on television – a great way of sorting out his thoughts and coming up with new hypotheses. The TV seemed to numb a part of his mind and leave the rest free to wander and make wild co

Mark waited by the roadside for five minutes until he was certain Clive was gone, then he opened the wallet. It contained two hundred and fifty pounds in cash, all in nice crisp twenties and tens, fresh from the Cashpoint, along with credit cards, photos of a smiling woman and three blond children – Clive’s family, no doubt – and a number of receipts for petrol and meals. Nowhere did it say that Clive was a doctor, and Mark guessed he was probably just a traveling salesman. And a pervert. Worried that the police would be after him after the incident, though, he thought of striking out across open country and avoiding the roads. But there was no way, he realized, that Clive was going to report what had happened. Even if he said Mark just attacked him in order to rob him, Mark could make enough noise to cause problems. And maybe others would come forward. Clive must know this; Mark doubted he was the first victim. And there was that smiling woman with the three blond children to consider. No, he thought, he was safe for the moment.

It was getting dark and he still had a long way to go. The moors became even eerier as the light faded and mist settled in patches. He knew he’d get lost if he headed for open country, probably die of exposure. Mark thought he could hear a dreadful howling in the distance. Weren’t there ghostly hounds on the moors? Or werewolves? He thought about that film again, the one where the American tourist got bitten by a wolf on the moors and turned into a werewolf, and realized he had seen it when he was back with his mum and Crazy Nick, not at the squat. Or seen some of it. When Crazy Nick saw Mark was enjoying the film, he declared it was rubbish and switched to boxing. After that, Mark pretty much lost interest in television. There was no point, as he never got to watch anything he wanted anyway. He shivered and started to walk toward the nearest village, Helmsley, which he didn’t think was very far.

When he got to the village, the lights in the houses and pubs were all on. It looked like a twee, tourist sort of place from what Mark could make out as he walked down the main street. He checked for Clive’s car in the main car park and by the roadside, but thankfully couldn’t see it. He laughed at himself, not sure why he was so paranoid. Clive had taken off like a bat out of hell and he wouldn’t stop until he got to Scarborough. Mark had scared the shit out of him. Mark looked around to see that no one was watching, then he stopped and dropped Clive’s wallet, minus the cash, down a grate.

There was a newsagent’s shop still open at the corner, and Mark went in and bought a packet of cigarettes, twenty Benson amp; Hedges, seeing he was so flush, and a copy of the evening paper, just to see if there was any news about the fires. He was hungry and the cafés were all closed, the way they always seemed to be at teatime, so he ducked into a friendly-looking pub. He went first to the toilet, where he was able at least to clean up his hands and face and brush some of the muck off the suede overcoat. It was badly stained from his fall on the wet grass, though, and there was nothing he could do about that. Other than the overcoat, which he took off and carried over his arm so no one could see the stains, he reckoned he didn’t look so bad.

Nobody paid him much attention as he sipped his pint of Gui